Scottish Community Safety Network (SCSN) and Evaluation Support Scotland (ESS) brought together practitioners from across the sector to develop Measuring What Matters – a toolkit to help those working in the field to have a better understanding about their outcomes and how to measure what matters in their work to prevent unintentional harm.

We are delighted to publish two case studies of projects which have used the Measuring What Matters Framework to evaluate the impact of their work in reducing unintentional harm.

Fife Cares

‘Fife Cares’ is a Fife Council Safer Communities Team initiative. It offers a range of free safety and security visits which can be arranged directly or made on behalf of a client or relative. Fife Cares Advisers:

  • Carry out home safety to visits to vulnerable adults, and parents of children and provide advice on how to minimise the risk of accidents in the home. 
  • Deliver awareness raising sessions to client groups, to raise awareness of key home and child safety issue 

During the Covid-19 pandemic much of this work was carried out on the phone.

Background

Liz Watson from Fife Cares explains why they wanted to test the toolkit:

The Fife Cares service has been in place for several years and while there have been various measures put in place to try and capture impact, it has proven difficult to establish something meaningful and sustainable. In the main performance is measured by counting numbers of visits and hospital admission data.

Neither of these provide an accurate measure of the impact of a visit on the individuals or families we visit. Through using this toolkit we hoped to have the opportunity to test different ways of evaluating.

We also hoped to get some support to evaluate remote service delivery, as much of our work changed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The service we decided to pilot is targeted at parents looking for advice and equipment to keep their children safe at home. Parents are often referred to us from health visitors. Our advisors have an initial call with parents about equipment and safety, and then carry out follow up calls 4 weeks later.

Download the full Case Study here.

Neighbourhood Networks

Neighbourhood Networks support vulnerable adults many with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and mental health issues to live an active, healthy life, safely, within their own homes and be fully involved within their local communities. Members take part in networks learning essential life skills, becoming more independent whilst spending more time with friends and becoming less reliant on paid support.

During the Covid-19 pandemic Neighbourhood Networks introduced a range of digital activities for their members, such as cooking classes, dance, yoga, photography and creative writing. Neighbourhood Networks Chief Executive Heather shares her experiences: 

“We were keen to use the Measuring what Matters programme to help evaluate our digital activities for people

with learning disabilities. Our work helps tackle social isolation. Activities such as our cooking classes help support vulnerable adults to be more independent and safer at home.

We developed our digital activities in response to the pandemic and we were looking for ideas about how we should evaluate the impact.”

Read the full Case Study here.